Former Democratic Senate nominee claims "Ketchup packets are not available in rural areas."

[Adam Griffin]

Unless you live in a ski resort, there's nowhere in West Virginia where you're not <20 minutes from the nearest McDonalds, of which there are also dozens in the state.

This is just flat out wrong - and if you knew anything about the Appalachian Plateau, you'd know simply looking at a map and trying to gauge time/distance based on linear miles couldn't be more inaccurate.

People think West Virginia is just a bunch of hillbillies living up in the Appalachian mountains.  The Appalachians don't even go through WV.  They're primarily in western Virginia and WV only has the western foothills.

...

Again, completely wrong - and again, looking at a simple map doesn't tell you anything. I'm sure you noticed the long stringy mountain chains and assumed that's all that comprises the Appalachians. What runs through VA/NC/GA etc is the Blue Ridge Mountains/R&V segment of the Appalachians. The part that runs through KY/WV etc is the Appalachian Plateau: devoid of all the neat, straight ridge & valley formations that exist through the aforementioned region and at a higher elevation for the most part. It's why a lot of places in WV can take upwards of an hour to navigate to/from despite only being 10 linear miles apart.

[Adam Griffin]

At any rate, there is maybe some semblance of truth to this. It's still a dumb comment to make in absolute terms, though.

First, many towns in the poor, rural segments of WV are devoid of many eating options; many of them will be locally-owned restaurants (yes, in some places, the only restaurant remaining will be a fast-food chain, but this is less common than people think). It's not too much of a stretch to assume local diners and the like deal with bottles as opposed to packets, as much about these entities are stuck in the past and not flush with cash.

Additionally, America as a whole got stingy with ketchup packets and condiments as a whole as soon as the Great Recession began. For those of us who were alive and aware pre-Recession, it's easy to recall drive-thru workers tossing in a handful of condiments whether asked for or not. Once the Recession happens, they started hoarding those things like gold - something I don't believe ever really reversed sans asking for them specifically (and even then, being given a tiny portion). As someone who hasn't eaten out much since COVID began, I'm not sure if things have gotten even worse in this regard, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Adam Griffin]

Unless you live in a ski resort, there's nowhere in West Virginia where you're not <20 minutes from the nearest McDonalds, of which there are also dozens in the state.

This is just flat out wrong - and if you knew anything about the Appalachian Plateau, you'd know simply looking at a map and trying to gauge time/distance based on linear miles couldn't be more inaccurate.

People think West Virginia is just a bunch of hillbillies living up in the Appalachian mountains.  The Appalachians don't even go through WV.  They're primarily in western Virginia and WV only has the western foothills.

...

Again, completely wrong - and again, looking at a simple map doesn't tell you anything. I'm sure you noticed the long stringy mountain chains and assumed that's all that comprises the Appalachians. What runs through VA/NC/GA etc is the Blue Ridge Mountains/R&V segment of the Appalachians. The part that runs through KY/WV etc is the Appalachian Plateau: devoid of all the neat, straight ridge & valley formations that exist through the aforementioned region and at a higher elevation for the most part. It's why a lot of places in WV can take upwards of an hour to navigate to/from despite only being 10 linear miles apart.

There is a McDonalds in Madison, WV which is 25 minutes from both Lake and Barrett.

If you lived in either Lake or Barrett you will have a way to get to Madison (your truck or a friends) or you grow your own food, raise chickens, and hunt squirrel. If you grow your own food, you will can your own catsup.

There are two grocery stores in Madison, including a Krogers, and several restaurants, serving Mexican, Pizza, Spaghetti, KFC, and McDonalds. If you are doing groceries once a week, you can drive on into Charleston.

Please don't be pedantic here. I zoomed in randomly and picked a random route where ~10 linear miles = close to an hour of travel by car: not a route that's very far from a McDonald's specifically. There are hundreds of examples throughout the state (particularly the further east you go) such as the above that may (or may not) be far from any national fast-food chain. The broader point is that there are plenty of areas that are extremely isolated from any meaningful form of civilization relative to most areas regardless of linear miles (which given OP's simplistic interpretation about how WV isn't in "Appalachia", is relevant to the level of detail he used).

[Adam Griffin]

WRT abortion: that isn't anywhere close to being the most salient cultural issue that has pushed rural America away from the Democrats. If you want the honest answer as to what has led to and is contributing to the largest number of rural voters who are actually open to voting Democratic abandoning the party, then know that it's "guns" (or more specifically, the inability for an increasingly coastal & urban party to message properly on the issue). It's literally the only cultural issue that directly impacts a very sizable segment of the rural population directly in their day-to-day lives in terms of D vs R framing (unlike "abortion", "immigration", "gay marriage", etc).

Reminds me a lot of those Joey Lucas episodes from The West Wing. Sure, ask 100 rural Americans why they don't vote Democratic and the plurality will probably say "abortion", but this doesn't tell you that virtually all of them either have been lifelong Republicans, inherent social conservatives or individuals who would have found themselves voting R at some point for any 1 of numerous social/cultural reasons.

[Adam Griffin]

When in actuality, upper-class Southern suburban whites are more likely to be going to those tacky megachurches than poor hillbillies. And West Virginia still voted Democratic pretty reliably up until 2000, and the 2010s downballot - long after the Moral Majority had started.

[Adam Griffin]

The argument was made that most persons in West Virginia lived within 20 minutes of a McDonalds.

Your contrary illustration was that it was hard to travel between two remote hollows, neither of which are large enough to have any restaurants or stores of any kind - unless someone has a small store in a converted porch. They may sell crackers, but any ketchup will be in larger containers or cans.

But these two random hollows share a common location that does have a McDonald's.

And if you are in Barrett, WV it is even closer to Van, WV where the schools are, and which has a dollar store, which surely has crackers and catsup. And the High School serves breakfast. For that matter, a school is a surer sign of civilization than McDonald's isn't it?

Nobody lives in eastern West Virginia. I don't know whether the Greenbriar has ketchup. You may have to make do with cocktail sauce.

The argument was in regards to a broad claim made by GMA (that WV isn't mountainous/Appalachian, that people aren't poor there and that the state isn't difficult to navigate compared to most others). The reality is that there are many hollers and towns with only a handful of people in them, but they are everywhere and traversing even a short geographical distance in most directions takes twice as long as it would even in other Appalachian regions. All of that adds up. It's not inherently about whether ketchup packets are present or whether one particular fast-food chain exists, but the cumulative effect of all of it on retail, commercial, residential and even familial dynamics.

And 40% of West Virginians live in the eastern portions (excluding the Panhandle, where another 10% live), which was roughly the only area GMA was implying was Appalachian by any stretch.

[Adam Griffin]

The argument was in regards to a broad claim made by GMA (that WV isn't mountainous/Appalachian, that people aren't poor there

Jesus Christ this website f---ing sucks.  Please, by all means, quote the post where I said there are no poor people in West Virginia, or else apologize for lying.

No (non-coastal rich elite; doesn't apologize)

[Adam Griffin]

The argument was made that most persons in West Virginia lived within 20 minutes of a McDonalds.

Your contrary illustration was that it was hard to travel between two remote hollows, neither of which are large enough to have any restaurants or stores of any kind - unless someone has a small store in a converted porch. They may sell crackers, but any ketchup will be in larger containers or cans.

But these two random hollows share a common location that does have a McDonald's.

And if you are in Barrett, WV it is even closer to Van, WV where the schools are, and which has a dollar store, which surely has crackers and catsup. And the High School serves breakfast. For that matter, a school is a surer sign of civilization than McDonald's isn't it?

Nobody lives in eastern West Virginia. I don't know whether the Greenbriar has ketchup. You may have to make do with cocktail sauce.

The argument was in regards to a broad claim made by GMA (that WV isn't mountainous/Appalachian, that people aren't poor there and that the state isn't difficult to navigate compared to most others). The reality is that there are many hollers and towns with only a handful of people in them, but they are everywhere and traversing even a short geographical distance in most directions takes twice as long as it would even in other Appalachian regions. All of that adds up. It's not inherently about whether ketchup packets are present or whether one particular fast-food chain exists, but the cumulative effect of all of it on retail, commercial, residential and even familial dynamics.

And 40% of West Virginians live in the eastern portions (excluding the Panhandle, where another 10% live), which was roughly the only area GMA was implying was Appalachian by any stretch.

You responded to a claim that there wasn't a McDonald's within 20 minutes of every person in the Mountain State. But even Barrett is within 25 minutes. And Barrett is extremely isolated. It takes 15 minutes to get to the schools in Van, and Van HS is literally one of the smallest high schools in the state (108 students).

Incidentally, there are 138 McDonald's in West Virginia or about one for every 12,500 persons.

This is what I was referring to as eastern West Virginia. You can't seriously claim that McDowell and Raleigh or the Monongahela valley are in eastern West Virginia. You might as well claim Pittsburgh or Hancock county because if you go east you are in Pennsylvania.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/09177813-40d0-4640-a648-9405659557ba

Just pick out the counties with large election precincts. These 12 counties have barely more than Kanawha County.

It is indeed hard to find a McDonald's near the Pocahontas County, perhaps an hour drive from Marlinton. But there are plenty of restaurants in Marlinton. They might not have catsup, but they may have endive. And there is a DQ if you want a burger.

Again, the full context of his [entire] post was that WV isn't some "sprawling wasteland", that everybody is close to civilization (unless they're at a "ski resort"), and that nobody in WV lives in the Appalachian mountains. The fact that I didn't quote his entire spiel while addressing him in order to avoid some big, bulky blockquote engagement (guess it's too late now!) doesn't really change that. Despite the fact that all of this wrong to varying degrees - and since you still want to be pedantic about McDonald's - then let's look at your original post: "<20 minutes" according to him is less than "25 minutes", so wrong, wrong, wrong!

Frankly, I don't give a s[inks]t about McDonald's. And as far as any idiomatic antitheses apply here, I'm much more someone who believes in the "spirit" of one's comments than the "letter". Dude was basically implying that WV isn't isolated, poor or Appalachian: all of that can (and has) been disproven. Beyond that, I'm not interested in arguing about how much drive time to Mickey D's is involved (only that said drive time is much more than it would be between virtually any 2 other points in linear distance anywhere in the continental US because of WV's inherent geographical isolation).

As far as geographic definitions are concerned, I did my best to reflect what OP meant by looking at a single map and making a gross misjudgment. The area on my map mostly reflects the area at the highest elevations in the state as a whole [2] (and yes, that includes portions of McDowell and Wyoming, while excluding most of the Panhandle).